Report In Police-sex Claim In Demand, Inaccessible

MERIDEN — A report containing the findings of an internal police investigation into allegations that a city officer coerced a woman to have sex has suddenly become hot property.

The woman wants the report. Her lawyer wants it. The press wants it. Even the city attorney wants it.

But the only person who can get to the report, which this week became the focus of a lawsuit, is in Las Vegas.

The report is in a locked cabinet in the police department. Sgt. Lenny Caponigro, who is vacationing this week, has the only key, police said Thursday. Caponigro headed the internal investigation.

``We can't get to it,'' said Lt. Robert Green.

The woman who made the original accusation of coercion, Tanya Dingle, filed a lawsuit this week against Police Chief Robert E. Kosienski and Caponigro. In it, she contends that she was denied access to the findings of the internal investigation.

Dingle's suit contends that Kosienski and Caponigro ``refused to disclose the officer's identity or any information from the investigation.'' It also contends that the investigation found an officer guilty of Dingle's accusations, but that the officer was not reprimanded.

It was unclear Thursday why Dingle believed the police had concluded an officer was guilty.

Green, who has not reviewed the report, said a guilty finding was unlikely. ``I'm sure if any of the allegations were true, the chief would have done something,'' he said.

Kosienski declined, through his secretary, to comment on the case.

The case goes back to February 1997 when, according to Dingle, a police officer, who refused to identify himself, called her at home and threatened to arrest her if she did not have sex with him. Dingle was on probation at the time and an arrest would have sent her to prison.

She said she gave in to the officer's demand and had sexual relations with him repeatedly during the next several months. She said she never knew his real name.

Her complaint led to the internal police investigation, which concluded this year. Green said department policy was to lock up internal investigation reports and release them only upon request.

City attorney Chris Hankins who is defending the police department against Dingle's lawsuit, said he can't do much until he, too, gets his hands on the report.

But Hankins, like a slew of others, will have wait until Caponigro returns to work Monday morning.